In running slacks, a snug jacket, pale extensions and shades borrowed from Anna Wintour, the film’s lead shuffles into a bank and slides a note to the teller. The man across the glass counter looks up to find a bemused face miming an explosion, raising her palms over her head. Within seconds, he fumbles with his oral inhaler and collapses. When he comes around, the female bandit has returned from the water cooler with a cup of water for him. He tosses wads of notes at her, asking her to keep calm. “It’s okay, I’ll go to some other bank,” she says, making a dash for the exit. Excluding the above mentioned which perhaps, presents a recognisable human emotion (of empathy), the 30-year-old eponymous lead in Simranseems utterly self-consumed, maniacally enterprising yet motiveless, determined yet delusional and distractingly giggly even though she’s under serious debt and is being hunted down by loan sharks. It just doesn’t add up.

Inspired by the eventful life of 24-year-old Sandeep Kaur who robbed several banks in Arizona, California and Utah in 2014 under glamourous disguises — the FBI even named her the Bombshell Bandit — translating the material for Hindi cinema would’ve been a stiff task. That the woman in question resorted to a life of crime when walls started closing in on her, required establishing desperate circumstances. Modelled on the accidental robber, the 30-year-old divorcee Praful Patel (Kangana Ranaut) here however, seems only slightly perturbed by her mediocre existence. A housekeeping help with a hotel, Praf (as she prefers to be called) chances upon some beginner’s luck in a high stakes card game in LA while attending a friend’s bachelorette. Soon, she ditches her beer for pink champagne and leather jacket for a designer off-shoulder. But then, lady luck plummets — she loses all her earnings, even gambling off what she had set aside for an apartment. Unable to cut her losses, she returns to Sin City but her second innings at the neon circus of fortune is just as unceremonious. Incessant bawling, kicking and screaming follow and she’s taken off the table by a man who could pass for a less doped version of Snoop Dogg. Without introducing himself, he pulls out wads of cash from his jacket — a loan with a pre-determined interest. Needless to say, this investment doesn’t pull through and Praf has crossed those who will execute her like Liam Neeson does to those who abduct his family members. Despite the largely cheerful proceedings, it’s fair to assume that this one’s headed for a dark climax. But the frivolity reduces this compelling story of battling circumstances to one about a girl who doesn’t precisely know what she seeks.

Weighed down by the pressure of carrying this film on her slender shoulders, Kangana Ranaut’s Praful seems like one who can’t tell ‘frank’ from ‘cocky’. Agreed, a character who chooses to lead life on her own terms shouldn’t be bothered to process her thoughts or engage in internal monologue. But Kangana’s Praful is also consistently high-on-life and supremely docile. When a suspicious man with dreadlocks ushers you to a corner and lobs wads of cash at you to continue gambling, you don’t respond with, “You give me money, you’re a nice person.” That the actress puts her back-and-a-half into it is evident, and having played many a emotionally warped females in films, this one would seem like a dhokla-walk. But while she delivers to a certain extent, her character is written with barely enough depth to justify her actions. Kishore Shahane and Hiten Kumar as Praful’s obsessively protective and overbearing parents are near-flawless and carry the weight of their character’s concerns and regrets in every frame. Almost like a feminist comeback, Sohum Shah’s dispensable love interest role seems like an afterthought. Director Hansal Mehta, whose realistic and cinematic portrayals in films such as Aligarhand Shahid have proven the deft and detailing of his work, fails to straddle genres here and Simranseems like a classic case of too many cooks pickle the undhiyo.

One obvious concern is the film’s casual tone that distracts one from being sensitised to the magnitude of the crime portrayed on screen. It’s almost like the events have been exclusively gamified for an audience intolerant to tension. Pin the writer or the one who rewrote it? You decide.

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